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Gardiner Harris

Indian villagers gather around the bodies of two teenage sisters hanging from a tree in Katra village in Uttar Pradesh state, India. The victims' families allege that local police were shielding the attackers. Photo: AP

Delhi: The rape and murder of two teenage girls in an Indian village threatened to touch off wider strife on Thursday, when the father of one of the girls said the crime was the product of a conspiracy among Yadavs, members of the dominant caste in the area.

The two girls, cousins who were 15 and 14, were found dead on Wednesday, their bodies hanging from mango trees in Katra Shadat Ganj, a village in Uttar Pradesh state. An autopsy confirmed that they had been raped and strangled.

Indian police have arrested one man and are looking for four other suspects, police said on Thursday.

"We have registered a case under various sections, including that of rape, and one of the accused has been taken into custody. There were five people involved, one has been arrested and we are looking for the others," Budaun's Superintendent of Police Man Singh Chouhan told reporters.

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Chouhan said a post-mortem had been conducted and DNA samples had been been taken to help identity the perpetrators.

Uttar Pradesh state, like much of India, is deeply split by religious and caste divisions and has been prone to mob violence, often in reaction to crimes committed by members of one group against another. Against that backdrop, the father's accusations of a caste-based conspiracy are potentially explosive.

Two police officers are accused of involvement in the crime.

The victims' families allege that local police were shielding the attackers as they refused to take action when the girls were first reported missing. It was only after angry villagers found the hanging corpses and took the bodies to a nearby highway and blocked it in protest, say the families, that police registered a case of rape and murder.

A case of conspiracy had also been registered against two constables, said Chouhan, adding that they had been suspended.

The father, an agricultural labourer from a low-ranking caste, said the girls were last seen alive on Tuesday evening in an orchard, in the company of a man named Pappu Yadav. (His surname is the same as his caste.) The father said a relative saw the girls with Yadav and two of Yadav's brothers and, for reasons he did not explain, the relative tried to intervene between Yadav and the girls.

At that point, one of the Yadav brothers pulled out a pistol "and put it to the head of my cousin-brother", the father said, using a common term in India for a close relative. "He got scared and ran away."

When he heard what had happened, the father said, he went to the police station and asked that Yadav's house be searched. But the police officers, members of the Yadav caste, "took the side of the culprits", the father said.

Charges of rape by a low-caste father have deep resonance here, because for centuries upper-caste Hindus were free to attack, rape and even murder those in low castes with impunity.

Sex crimes against young girls and women are widespread in India, say activists, adding that females from poor, marginalised, low-caste communities are often the victims.

A report by the Asian Centre for Human Rights in April last year said 48,338 child rape cases were recorded in India from 2001 to 2011, and the annual number of reported cases had risen more than fourfold - 336 per cent - over that period.